Dying for drugs: Toll rises among young in Kalamazoo area

KALAMAZOO -- In the five years ending last November, one teenager died of an accidental drug overdose in Kalamazoo County.
In the eight months since, the number stands at five -- and counting. The cause: Heroin and other opiates.

Those teens are among 16 people ages 17 to 22 who have died of an opiate overdose in Kalamazoo County since 2003, a Kalamazoo Gazette investigation found.

Opiate deaths are on the rise in Kalamazoo County, claiming people of all ages. But the toll among young adults has been particularly severe. Since 2003, 38 percent of all overdose deaths among adults 23 and older have been linked to opiates, but among young adults, it's 80 percent.

Here's another way to view it: Eliminate the opiates and nearly all of the county's overdose deaths among young adults since 2003 would not have occurred.

"There's obviously a social network there where someone has access, and they're sure not learning from each other" about how dangerous opiates can be, said Richard Perry, assistant superintendent for Portage Public Schools.

Six of the victims were former or current Portage Public Schools students.

Last week, Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety detectives confirmed they are investigating the July 30 death of a 16-year-old boy who was to start his junior year at Kalamazoo Central High School. The teen is suspected of overdosing on methadone, but investigators said they are awaiting toxicology results.

If the overdose is confirmed, the boy's death would be the 12th opiate-related death among young adults in the past 17 months, which is more overdose deaths for people age 22 or younger than the previous four years combined, the Gazette found in an examination of 13,000 death certificates filed in the county since 2003.

"It's the hidden epidemic," said Michael Liepman, an addiction psychiatrist with Michigan State University's Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies.

The Gazette's investigation focused on opiate-related deaths of people age 22 and younger in the aftermath of the June 28 death of Amy Bousfield, an 18-year-old graduate of Portage Central High School.

Her death was the sixth linked to heroin since 2004, and all of the victims were current or former Portage students, the Gazette found. Four of those deaths occurred in the past eight months.

The other 10 overdose deaths of young adults were linked to other opiates, including methadone, morphine and oxycodone.

The Gazette's investigation of drug-related deaths since 2003 also found:

• 181 people of all ages have died from drug overdoses, both accidental and intentional.
• 77 of the death certificates specifically listed heroin or another opiate as a cause of death.
• 90 percent of overdose victims and 95 percent of opiate-related overdose victims were white.
• 70 percent of opiate-overdose victims were white males.
• 35 was the average age of an opiate-overdose victim.

Linda Tuttle's 22-year-old son was one of the opiate-overdose victims. She found him dead last Oct. 24 at their Comstock Township home. Toxicology tests found a mix of oxycodone and alcohol killed him.

"It just leaves a big hole in your heart," Tuttle said. "Life's just never the same again."

Disturbing trend
Bousfield's death has sparked discussion about drug use among teenagers and young adults and spurred calls for increased funding for drug treatment. It also has fueled fears of a new wave of drug problems in the community.

"So many of these parents are keeping it hush-hush, and the schools are keeping it hush-hush," Liepman said. "The issue is that if we had a problem of some kind of strep infection, that would be out in the open. ... But instead we're having a problem because there are drugs in the schools.

"Well, no one wants to be associated with that stigma," he said.

There's also a dearth of precise data.

The county does not have a system for tracking drug deaths. To find the numbers, the Gazette examined thousands of death certificates filed between Jan. 1, 2003, and July 31 of this year. County residents who died elsewhere are not included in those records.

The death certificates are sorted by the date they are filed. There is no database to sort the information by age, cause of death or other information.

Dr. Richard Tooker, the county's chief medical officer, said his office has seen an increase in the number of deaths since 2004 in which opiate narcotics, specifically methadone, were involved.

The Gazette's investigation supports Tooker's observation, and it shows victims are getting younger with each passing year.

In 2003, only three of the 25 overdose deaths in the county were linked to opiates. Two involved older adults, and the third was a codeine overdose that killed an infant. In 2006, 23 of the 39 overdose deaths in the county involved an opiate, including a 19-year-old and five people in their 20s.

Since January 2007, 25 people in the county have died of an opiate overdose, including five teenagers and nine people in their 20s. The figures do not include the July 30 death of the 16-year-old boy; that death certificate has yet to be filed.

Opiates have been particularly deadly among young adults.

In 2003, the county's only drug-related death involving a young adult was a 21-year-old woman who committed suicide by taking cyanide. There has since been one other drug-related suicide among people ages 17 to 22, and 18 accidental overdose deaths, of which 16 involved opiates. Of the other two deaths, one victim overdosed on cocaine and the other on alcohol.

Except for Bousfield, all 18 of the accidental overdoses were white males.

The teenager who died July 30 was African-American. If methadone is confirmed as the cause of death, the 16-year-old will be the county's youngest opiate-related death during the period examined, with the exception of the infant death.

Tooker said the overall numbers "are not surprising."

"If you look at any community our size ... we're probably very average, and I certainly don't expect these numbers to go down," he said.

He's calling for a system to track drug deaths and drug-related emergencies to identify patterns and intervene when necessary. Tooker said there is no reporting protocol in place in the county to track the changing patterns of drug abuse.

"What we do about (drug-related deaths) is a question that may be partially answered by figuring out what we're facing," Tooker said.

Focus on Portage
Much of the current discussion about young-adult opiate abuse has been focused in Portage.

Portage city and school officials have stressed that their community represents a much broader regional and national drug problem.

However, the Gazette investigation found that the Portage area has a disproportionate number of overdose deaths among young adults.

Of the 16 opiate-related deaths among victims under age 22, four were former Portage Central High School students, one was a current Central student and one was a former Portage Northern High School student.

Portage Central was the only area high school with more than one victim. Other victims were former students of Comstock, Gull Lake, Loy Norrix, Paw Paw, Parchment and Sturgis schools. Four of the victims did not attend high school in this area.

The number of overdose deaths in the Portage area "are alarming," Perry said. "The fact that it's heroin is really alarming."

The district became aware of a heroin issue among Portage high school students several years ago. Officials cracked down on drugs and alcohol possession and use at school, including bringing in dogs monthly to sniff out illegal substances. They also instituted regular parent forums on substance abuse.

Perry said the reforms seem to have been successful in decreasing drugs in the school. It's been two years since heroin or another illegal drug other than marijuana has been found on a student at Central or Northern high schools, he said.

But the recent deaths indicate that keeping drugs out of school doesn't keep them out of the community, he said.

"It goes to show the schools can control only so much," Perry said.

Still, the district is looking at how to step up its prevention and enforcement efforts. Last week, a group of eight school and police officials from Portage attended a national conference on dealing with substance use in schools, and the district is considering initiatives discussed there.

Portage school board President Shirley Johnson, the mother of a current Portage Central student and of a 2006 Central graduate, said solutions have to go beyond the schools and into homes and neighborhoods.

"My question is, what's going on? What's happening or not happening?" Johnson said.
"Is it a blip? When kids are dying, you don't want to say, 'Let's see how this trend works out.'"

Rex Hall Jr. can be reached at 388-7784 or rhall@kalamazoogazette.com. Julie Mack can be reached at 388-8578 or jmack@kalamazoogazette.com.